With the likes of Frazier-Lyde in the sport—women boxers who “showed skill comparable to a preschooler in a playground scuffle”—the sport was “turning into a joke, even by boxing’s comical standards.”[24]
The day before Frazier-Lyde’s debut fight on February 5, of the six fight cards contested around the United States fully five of them had female bouts on the cards (while on a similar weekend five years earlier there had been none). One fight card even featured women as the main event—a six-round competitive fight (contested in Warren, Ohio) between Sabrina Hall and Vickie Woods. In addition, two WIBF women’s title fights in Germany were also featured prominently with one of the contenders, Eva Jones Young, hailing from Indiana.
While Hall and Woods had some local coverage in Ohio, there seems to have been none for Young. There was also no acknowledgment that female boxing had reached the point where women were featured on multiple cards across the United States—an incredible accomplishment in a brief span of time. But the growing popularity of the sport did, with some justification, open it to criticism due to some of the unevenness of the fighters.
The following Friday, on February 11, 2000, ESPN2 broadcast an all-female card from Kenner, Louisiana, featuring three IFBA ten-round title-fight bouts and three six-round bouts on the undercard.
The women fighting for a title may not have had the marquee names of Martin or Rijker, but they were serious about the sport and had worked hard to perfect skills that were improving over time. The bouts included such fighters as Jolene Blackshear and Margaret Sidoroff in a much anticipated matchup—among those who followed the sport—that ended up with Sidoroff, a highly skilled pressure fighter, getting the nod by unanimous decision after ten rounds of truly competitive boxing.
Both women had garnered their share of notices in the press since they turned pro, but their work that night and those of the other fighters on the card including newcomer Ann Wolfe, a powerful super middleweight who was a definite comer, were barely noticed by the press.
Boxer Jolene Blackshear, interviewed for a newspaper article a month later, voiced concerns similar to those raised by Graham. She was fearful that these hard-won gains would be lost due to the focus on the hype surrounding those boxing daughters who’d yet to show any real skills. As she put it, “Boxing takes athletic prowess, skill, coordination, hard training and profound dedication.”
She went on to say, “It’s not street fighting or mud wrestling . . . and it’s not something you just step into the ring and do. You have to be really dedicated to succeed.”[25]
As the year wore on, much of the press attention about women’s boxing continued to center on the boxing daughters—even outside of sports pages. An article published in Bloomberg Businessweek in July 2000 was a case in a point. Entitled “Daddy’s Little Girls Come Out Swinging,” the article posed the question, “Can the daughters of famous boxers turn female boxing into a marquee sport?”
It, too, argued that the boxing daughters would have to deliver real fighting ability in order to aid the sport—while balancing the fact that according to an unnamed executive at Don King Productions, Inc., “We don’t have enough serious women boxers around to meet demand.” He went on to say, “I don’t think the whole daughter syndrome is viable because they’re not all serious athletes. I don’t want to see girls closing their eyes in the ring.”[26]
The flipside of the argument was the reality that more women were entering the sport each day, with some fifteen hundred women in the amateurs and pros in the United States alone, plus the growing number of women who were entering the ranks of women boxers in the rest of the world.
What many fighters and advocates for the sport feared was that all the hard work and improvement in the performance of female boxers was being undermined by the continued focus on boxing daughters.
Million Dollar Babies . . . Not
With the advent of the boxing daughters, the clamor for a Martin-Rijker showdown had somewhat lessened in the press, which had muted its enthusiasm for their possible matchup in favor of an Ali-Frazier IV. That’s not to say the possibility of a Martin-Rijker toe-to-toe battle went away, as the rivalry between the pair had, if anything, become even more intense over time. The two even had a couple of very public face-offs that rivaled the confrontations between male marquee fighters.
The prize money for the fight was reported to be the largest purse ever offered for a women’s boxing contest—$750,000 a piece. There were stipulations however. Martin insisted that Rijker take a chromosome test before she’d even consider fighting her, which the Rijker camp rejected as insulting.
In 1998 Rijker had publically challenged Martin in the middle of a press conference at the Olympic Theater in Los Angeles—one that provoked a shrill response from Martin who was infuriated at Rijker’s effrontery.
The enmity between the pair only increased when Rijker later showed up at a public workout being held to promote a Don King card in 2000. On it, Felix Trinidad was set to challenge David Reid in a WBA title fight with Martin only appearing in an eight-rounder on the undercard against Belinda “Brown Sugar” Laracuente, a slick boxer with impressive skills, who’d won a WIBF light welterweight title. (Martin won the fight by split decision—one that was widely disputed by boxing experts at ringside, the boxing press, and the fans who watched the fight. They all gave Laracuente at least five out of the eight rounds.)
At the presser held at the L.A. Boxing Gym, as Reid worked out in the ring, Rijker and Martin got into a confrontation that spilled onto the floor, subsided, and then rose up again on the other side of the ring.
The question never answered was whether the confrontation was part of an elaborate script to hype a possible bout then under negotiation between Rijker’s manager, Stan Hoffman, and Don King, or whether the years of “trash talk” had led to real enmity.
Rijker’s most recent fight had been in August 1999 against Diane Dutra. Although Rijker had defeated Dutra by TKO in the third round, Rijker had burst an eardrum. Rijker was scheduled to fight again in November on a Tyson undercard but the bout was canceled, along with a second one and a December fight that she canceled due to a stomach ulcer. She was still in the “game,” but the Dutra fight proved to be her last until she returned to the ring in February 2002.
In the interim, Rijker did publicity for Shadow Boxers (which was receiving rave reviews), and she was in the beginning stages of carving out a television and film career. Questions about Rijker continued, however, especially since she wasn’t facing women considered at the top of the division such as Sumaya Anani and Kathy Collins, who were both pushing ahead despite any negative publicity the boxing daughters had generated.
By the end of 2000 women’s boxing seemed to be in two worlds: female fighters who’d achieved hype such as Martin, Rijker, St. John, and Laila Ali; and the nonmarquee fighters who while skilled were not able to garner the attention of the top tier.
In the hyped camp, Ali was gaining real celebrity and a crossover appeal with a string of wins (against less than stellar opponents). Her fighting ability still had much room to grow, and in her eighth fight—against boxer Kendra Lenhart—Ali was definitely “rocked” a few times, in what could be characterized as an “ugly” bout with lots of wide shots as they both fought toe to toe through many of the rounds. It was also the first time Ali had gone the distance—a full six rounds—winning the fight by unanimous decision.
Jacqui Frazier-Lyde was also busy winning a total of five four-rounders and one six-rounder, all ending in either TKOs or KOs. Her fights were mismatches, but they hadn’t stopped her from touting her wins nor from clamoring for a showdown with Laila Ali. Press reports alluded to negotiations that would commence in October 2000 about a fight to occur sometime in March 2001, the thirtieth anniversary of the first meeting between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971.
“The fight is on. We just need to make it official,” said Peter Lyde, Jacqui Frazier-Lyde’s husband
and manager.[27]
The boxing daughters aside, women who’d begun boxing professionally in the late 1990s were a new class of professional female boxers. Fighters such as Ann Wolfe, Belinda Laracuente, Layla McCarter, Ada Velez, Chevelle Hallback, Yvonne Reis, and former kickboxers Alicia Ashley and Melissa Del Valle were all crisp, technically proficient boxers who were elevating the game, joining the likes of Collins, Anani, and Byrd, who were already garnering attention and respect. Alicia Ashley had also appeared as a boxer in the film Girlfight, displaying her consummate ring abilities in the fight scenes with Michelle Rodriguez.
The skills exhibited by Laracuente in her bout with Christy Martin were a case in point: Laracuente, twenty-one, moved with the grace and ease of a boxer who’d grown up in the ring. She had slick moves that saw her using her defensive prowess to stymie Martin through much of the bout, while peppering her almost at will with stiff jabs and hard-hitting combinations that mottled Martin’s face. As if to further crystallize the difference in style and boxing pedigree, Laracuente was quoted as saying she “beat up the old lady,” despite losing by majority decision.[28]
If Lucia Rijker was the first “visible” female boxer with “real” boxing skills, then the fighters who were competing for WIBA, WIBF and IFBA titles were in her wheelhouse and beyond in terms of skills, determination, and courage. The nonmarquee fighters, however, were primarily boxing for “house” money, meaning virtually nothing. And while Rijker may have complained that she hadn’t earned $25,000 for a title fight whereas Laila Ali earned that amount right out of the gate, fighters such as Laracuente, Hallback, and McCarter, by comparison, barely earned tip money.
Dan Cucich, a past president of the Women’s International Kick Boxing Association (now defunct), raised the issue of a two-tiered boxing system on a WBAN fight review site after the Martin-Laracuente fight. He opined that “big money” was perpetuating a system where the technically sound fighters were being pushed out of matches in favor of “the famous daughters” fighting as one-fight wonders. The perpetuation of Christy Martin and Mia St. John as marquee fighters was also to the detriment of the excellent boxers who were hard at work perfecting their craft for peanuts and with limited financial opportunities—despite their consistent displays of good ring skills and exciting matches.[29]
Still, these boxers were undaunted and pushed themselves each day for the love of the sport and any little recognition they might garner on occasional television appearances and in the press.
Women’s Boxing and the World
With the advent of the 2000s, women’s boxing was no longer confined to the United States and was proving very popular throughout Europe, Japan, and Latin America. The organization that Barbara Buttrick had started in 1989, WIBF, was particularly active in Europe, conferring its first title there two months after introduction of the WIBF championships in April of 1995.
The first European WIBF titleholder was Regina Halmich,[30] who won the WIBF European Super Flyweight Championship in June 1995.
Halmich was rapidly becoming Europe’s best-known (and best-paid) female boxer with a career that began back in 1994. A pretty five-foot, three-inch blonde, she had been a kickboxer and had won championships three years running from 1992 to 1994, before switching over to boxing. She also faced a global boxing “Who’s Who” over the span of her career, although she fought almost exclusively in Germany. She eventually amassed an impressive 54-1 record, having boxed for thirteen years. As the face of women’s boxing in Europe, Halmich helped popularize the sport and had a legion of fans who supported her.
Another European champion was the British fighter Jane “The Fleetwood Assassin” Couch. A native of Fleetwood, England, Couch had been on the fast track to a life of drugs, alcohol, and street brawls when she happened to see a documentary about women boxing in the United States. Intrigued, she took to the gym and, shortly thereafter, entered her first fight—a Muay Thai bout.
She proved successful in the ring, amassing a 4-0 record (one that was unsanctioned in the United Kingdom) before heading to Demark in 1996 to fight in a WIBF light welterweight title fight against French boxer Sandra Geiger (1-0). Couch won the title, and went on to defend it in New Orleans, Louisiana, the following year, when she won a seventh-round TKO decision over veteran boxer Andrea DeShong. She continued to successfully defend her title, winning a unanimous decision over boxer Leah Mellinger (who went on to defeat Kathy Collins in an IWBF and IFBA title bout).
After losing two bouts to the 1970s boxing great Dora Webber (in 1997 and 1998), Jane Couch began her fight against the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC—the same group that had prevented Barbara Buttrick from fighting nearly fifty years before) to be licensed to box. The BBBC denied the license on the premise that women were too emotionally unstable to box due to “premenstrual tension.” The battle was taken before the British Industrial Board where Couch argued that she was being discriminated against. She had previously won the backing of Britain’s Equal Opportunities Commission. The board ruled in her favor and “ridiculed” the BBBC “for their defence.” Couch was issued her license shortly thereafter with her first licensed bout set for November 1998 against a Yugoslavian fighter, Simona Lukic (1-4-1).
Couch’s fight garnered a lot of controversy in the United Kingdom. Some was predictable, given the public’s lack of exposure to the sport. The then current heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis’s manager, Frank Maloney, was among the more vocal critics who maligned the fight as a “freak show”—one of the more common pejoratives hurled at female boxing.[31]
The “usual suspects” railing against the entry of women’s boxing into the sporting world were not the only critics. Even before Couch’s win against the much less experienced Lukic, Barbara Buttrick had expressed her dismay at the obvious mismatch—one that in her mind would only serve to leave the sport open to more criticism and controversy.
Speaking with a reporter from the British newspaper the Independent, Buttrick said:
To be honest I’m surprised they let this girl box Jane, because we certainly know very little about her. We [WIBF] offered them a good opponent but the promoter turned us down. This has made a mockery of women’s boxing, and it’s no good saying there are no good women boxers, because there are plenty out there.
It’s not fair to Jane. She’s worked so hard. She won the fight [to box] but she’s going to lose her credibility.[32]
Boxer Laura Serrano had a similar role to Couch in opening up women’s boxing in Mexico in 1998. An established fighter in the United States with her tough debut bout against Christy Martin behind her, Serrano, an attorney, waged a battle against Mexican authorities and eventually won the right for women to contest in boxing matches there—especially in Mexico City, which had long disallowed women to fight in the ring. The authorities had argued that boxing could injure female reproductive organs. Serrano, citing changes to the Mexican Constitution in 1992 that established equal pay for equal work, won the right for women to box in Mexico.
Argentine Marcella Eliana Acuna had famously fought her first two professional fights against Christy Martin and Lucia Rijker. Back in Argentina she helped establish women’s boxing as a legitimate sport when she fought in the first legal boxing match there against an American, Jamilla Lawrence, in 2001. Acuna won the four-round fight by split decision. She also fought in the first women’s world championship bout to be contested in Argentina, in 2002, when she fought and lost to the Brooklyn-based Jamaican fighter Alicia Ashley in the WIBF super bantamweight title fight. Acuna went on to lose a rematch to Ashley, staged in Argentina the following year.
In Australia female boxing was legal in some parts of the country and illegal in others. Queensland legalized it in 2000, but inexplicably the sport was banned in New South Wales from 1986 to 2008 (the ban was dropped in part to allow women to eventually compete in the Olympics). Nonetheless, women boxed, and a burgeoning amateur program began in the late 1990s.
Author Mischa Merz began her
amateur career in 1998, eventually winning gold in 2001 at the Australian National Championships. On the professional side, boxer Sharon Anyos began her career in 1998 as well, becoming one of the most successful boxers from Australia in that period.
Anyos (originally from Geelong, Victoria, near Melbourne) had studied karate as a child and won an Australian karate women’s title when she was sixteen years of age. From there she launched into kickboxing and Muay Thai, taking an Australian kickboxing title at age nineteen in 1989. She continued to compete as a kickboxer for the next several years, winning additional championships.
Anyos made her boxing debut in July 1998 fighting in Australia’s first sanctioned women’s world championship fight under the auspices of the Australian National Boxing Federation (ANBF). Her career soared from there as she fought a series of tough opponents—including losses to Jane Couch and Japanese fighter Fujin Raika—that helped to solidify her reputation as an excellent boxer. In 2005, Anyos handed Marcela Eliana Acuna one of her few losses when she defeated her in a ten-round WBC championship fight for the vacant title. Defeating Acuna established Anyos as one of the top female professional boxers in the sport.
Japan’s Fujin Raika had begun her career in 2000 in Tokyo, losing her first fight to Layla McCarter who’d come to Japan to fight her in April 2002. Raika went on to become the WIBA featherweight champion in December 2002, defeating Australia’s Sharon Anyos. Amassing a 25-8 record as of August 2013, Raika boxed such elite fighters as Chevelle Hallback, Jelena Mrdjenovich, Olivia Gerula, Ann Saccurato, and Belinda Laracuente.
With the international character of women’s boxing beginning to take hold, the sport met a mixed reception. In some countries, such as Germany and Denmark, the boxing establishment, the public, and the broadcast industry were providing their fighters marquee status and helping women to advance their careers. Great Britain and Australia, along with others, were much slower to embrace the sport giving very few women real chances to build their careers in their home country.
A History of Women's Boxing Page 40